Ajit Pawar: “We have always fought against each other, nothing different here,” says in response to the NCP’s split from Mahayuti for the local body elections

Ajit Pawar:  the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra and the chairman of the Nationalist Congress Party, made remarks on the party running independently of the Mahayuti alliance ahead of the municipal elections.

In order to “empower and support” their respective workers, the parties have chosen to fight in this manner. Pawar claims that joining forces with Sharad Pawar’s NCP group for the Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad elections may result in a consolidation of the vote share, which would be advantageous for them in and of itself. He emphasized that, like the BJP and Shiv Sena, the NCP and Congress ran independently in local body elections but joined forces for the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

“Since I entered politics, we have fought every election since 1999 with an alliance with the Congress,” Pawar told ANI. We were contesting elections together and cooperating in Parliament and the Lok Sabha. We were engaged in combat based on our individual symbolism. In the Assembly elections, the same thing took place. However, we consistently battled against one another in local body elections in order to empower and promote our respective party workers.”The BJP and Shiv Sena experienced the same thing. They were at odds with one another during the 2017 elections in Thane and Mumbai. Therefore, there’s no reason to believe that anything entirely different is taking on here,” he said.

Even after the results are announced on January 16, Pawar has confirmed that the three parties running independently in the local body elections—BJP, NCP, and Shiv—will not have an effect on how the Mahrashtra state government operates.

For the municipal elections, Pawar hailed the reunification of estranged family members, such as the Pawars in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad and the Thackerays in Mumbai. He expressed optimism that it would strengthen their support bases and credited the decision to run jointly to the requests of party workers.

“This is excellent, and I see it favorably. We chose to contest elections jointly (the two NCP groups) because of the karyakartas; if we fight elections separately, the votes would be split, which is not going to happen. We contested the state and Lok Sabha elections because the Karyakartas want to win. The leaders of our party met after they had a plan, but initially they couldn’t agree on anything,” he stated.

According to Pawar, the partnership was negatively impacted by earlier failures and the dissemination of false information. He denied that Ajit Pawar insisted on adopting the clock emblem, stating that he had never made such a request. He drew attention to the fact that the Congress, BJP, and Shiv Sena all ran separate elections using their own insignia. Pawar said that nomination papers had already been filed by the Shiv Sena, led by Eknath Shinde, who had not approached him for an alliance at first.

Alliance discussions started when workers from both sides proposed it, according to Ajit Pawar. They first tried to form an alliance with the Shiv Sena, he said, but it didn’t work out in time. In response to a query about the future of the NCP-NCP alliance, Pawar said that they have not given it any thought and are instead concentrating on making sure that the January 15 election is conducted correctly.

He underlined that leaders from both sides, not simply employees, must be consulted when making a long-term partnership decision. On January 15, voters will cast ballots in 29 municipal corporation elections around the state, including those in Mumbai, Pune, and Pimpri-Chinchwad. On January 16, the votes will be counted.